


Where the Universe Curves

by sharkgloves



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkgloves/pseuds/sharkgloves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diverges from canon - set after the end of series six.</p><p>Rimmer feels warm, but warm in the way that a television screen is when you put your hand on it. He’s warm like energy and it’s very different from the heat of another human being. Touching him makes Lister’s fillings ache and his hairs lift and prickle with static.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Universe Curves

He’d taken the trousers he’s wearing off of a dead man.

Well, “man” is probably the wrong word. Lister isn’t sure that a Simulant really counted as a man, no matter how ridiculously tall and muscular it was or the fact that it had stubble all along its jaw line. The skin had been fish-belly pale and not real and the hair only grew because of some inexplicable piece of programming. Human hair continues to grow after death, fingernails too; he isn’t sure if it is the same for Simulants.

Still. It had two human-looking legs and a pretty decent pair of trousers and no longer had much of a head with which to raise any sort of an objection. So.

The trousers slipped down its hips easily enough. Simulant it may have been but it was still dead and the dead take up less room dead than they had done living. But of course he’d already known that.

He hadn’t killed the Simulant, for whatever that was worth. Finding it lying there was just a bonus from a scavenging run on an already-wrecked ship on one of the nasty little asteroids that this sector seemed to be filled with. They got lucky this time: they’d managed to strip enough from the vessel for Starbug to keep limping along for a little more time. Another fortnight maybe and then they’ll have to start looking again. Maybe less than that.

Hack seven inches off the legs; pierce another hole in the belt and cinch it tight and he could finally throw out the old trousers which were filthy and stained and literally held together by duct tape and staples. It was no longer a fashion statement, simply all that there was. There’s nobody on board who can sew, and staples weren’t ideal but then a lot of things weren’t exactly ideal anymore.

He had two pairs of trousers before but he’d burnt the other pair. Vicious, but sobbing as he did it, he’d thrown them in the furnace along with everything else he couldn’t look at anymore: all of it covered in things that would never wash clean. Like with that gesture he could forget all the things he’d lost and would have to go on without. He doesn’t think he’d allow himself the luxury of such squeamishness now.

There are things he never thought himself capable of that he now does routinely.

Rimmer sits at the table or in his old chair and stares at the console as if that’s going to change anything. Mostly, he pretends he’s not watching Lister and Lister pretends he doesn’t notice he’s being watched.

When Rimmer’s body had been converted to hard light he had been able to eat real food again. He hadn’t really needed to but he seemed to enjoy the taste and the texture after years of hologramatic food that all tasted the same and all tasted like nothing. He doesn’t eat now and they don’t talk about it.

Rimmer doesn’t get hungry. He doesn’t get cold. When you come down to it he’s pretty much indestructible and there was a kind of security in that. Sometimes it would be the best thing Lister can think of to not have to scrabble each day for just enough to keep him on his feet and curl up beside the engine where it was warmest whenever he wants to sleep. The thermostat has never worked right since and making it work is beyond the odd bits of technical know-how he’s managed to cobble together over the years.

It does put out some heat, obviously, or his blood would freeze and crack in the pitiless temperature of open space. But it isn’t warm. It isn’t _enough_. He wraps himself in layer upon layer of stinking rags and stolen clothing and lets his beard grow out. It preserves body heat and saves them both from having to see the shape of his skull as it emerges.

Being like Rimmer would be an end to that, and sometimes he wants nothing more than an end. But then Rimmer had curled his fingers - mean pinching fingers - around Lister’s wrist, his voice high and snide and breathless.

“Oh, brilliant move, Lister. Inspired. Except for the _minor_ fact that your hologramatic file is currently several _billion_ light years away in some unknown direction back on Red Dwarf. Other than that it’s a winner.”

Lister had let his own fingers go lax and closed his eyes. There had been silence for several moments before Rimmer had added, not quite as an afterthought: “Besides, without Legion’s technology you would only be soft light. Take it from me: you don’t want to be soft light.”

Lister hadn’t replied and Rimmer had taken it away and they hadn’t spoken about it again. That had been countless fortnights ago and Lister still isn’t sure exactly what it was he had wanted.

They don’t really talk much anymore; not like before when they could fill hours, days, years with bickering and sniping and occasionally approaching something like a very grudging friendship. There had been times when Lister had thought he would go mad if he had to listen to that nasal, sarcastic voice for another second. Not anymore.

They skulk around each other, not quite making eye-contact and muttering banalities in each other’s direction every so often. To begin with, Rimmer had tried to draw him into an approximation of their old banter - ignoring the voices that would always be missing - but that had dried up quickly when Lister had refused to play along. They sit in silence and Lister rubs his fingers against his wrist over and over and refuses to acknowledge Rimmer’s eyes and the brittle fear there.

Sometimes huddling beside the engine isn’t enough to warm him. Not often, but sometimes. Sometimes it all steals through him, creeping like ice along his veins until there seems to be nothing to him but phantom pains in a hand that is no longer there and in the hollow cold space that is all ribcage and frost.

Rimmer feels warm, but warm in the way that a television set is when you put your hand on it. He’s warm like energy and it’s very different from the heat of another human being. Touching him makes Lister’s fillings ache and his hairs lift and prickle with static.

They don’t talk about this either.

Lister wouldn’t know what to say about this. What to say about how if you tuck your fingers beneath the shelf of Rimmer’s jaw there is warmth there but you can never forget that you aren’t touching anything alive. It isn’t even the same as with Simulants: when Lister had taken the trousers off of that body back on the wrecked vessel, the backs of his fingers had accidentally grazed against its belly and it had felt like skin. Cold but like skin.

When he runs his palm from Rimmer’s hand to his sleeve, or his neck to his collar it all feels the same. There is no real texture, none of it feels like skin or like cloth, there is just the feeling of energy catching and pulling at his fingertips. It isn’t like touching another person but the edges of Rimmer’s light crackles and thrums with quiet electricity and he gives off more warmth than anything else on this ship of ghosts.

He doesn’t know what Rimmer feels. He doesn’t ask.

Sitting up front in his old seat in the cockpit is one of the coldest places on the ship but Lister finds himself drawn there more and more these days. He doesn’t look at the console or the spaces around him, but straight out. They move a lot slower now but he doesn’t think it would make much difference anyway; the sky is filled with stars and it seems to go on forever without change.

Behind him, Rimmer clears his throat but doesn’t say anything and Lister doesn’t turn around. He remembers when Rimmer was brought back to keep him sane. It seems to Lister that now things are the other way round; that he’s only staying for Rimmer. Staying so that Rimmer won’t be left out here alone.

Several billion light years away his hologramatic file is safe and out of reach on Red Dwarf and there’s security in that. He only owes Rimmer so much after all. He slips his fingers up into the other sleeve and keeps his eyes on the endless stretch of stars.

The supplies will last for another fortnight maybe. Maybe less. He doesn’t think of anything beyond that.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2006 on my old journal under a different username.


End file.
